College was not a topic of conversation when Dr. Fredrick Michael Ennis was growing up.
Yet the seeds that the Ferris State University professor sowed at St. Clair County Community College continue to flourish today.
“I decided to attend SC4 my senior year at Capac High School in 1978,” he said. “At that time, there were typically two choices: Work for General Motors or go to college. No one in my family had attended college, and as a result, college was not discussed at the dinner table.
“My mother was 15 years old and my father 17 when I was born,” Ennis continued. “They had very few options in life and no experience with college. Any discussion about education dealt with the difficulty of just making it out of high school. I can proudly say my mother attended night school and graduated from high school two years before I did.”
Ennis said he didn’t have the funds to go away to school and was unsure of his career path when he chose his local community college.
“I went to SC4 because I did not have the money to attend a four-year institution and I wasn’t sure about a career choice,” he said. “Financially, SC4 was the most reasonable option available. I asked around my neighborhood and found out that my cousin and a few people from Imlay City were carpooling from Capac to Port Huron. I joined the group to cut down on the travel expense.”
Ennis worked three part-time jobs on the side and was able to pay for all of his tuition and textbooks while saving money to attend college.
“Along the way, I learned that I could take my first two years at a community college and then transfer credits into a four-year degree program at a university,” he said. “To be honest, after I finished completing the requirements for an associate degree, I thought it was the end of my educational journey — until a friend of mine called from Michigan State University and asked me when I was going to transfer. I was not sure how to do this, so I replied ‘Soon,’ not letting him know I had no idea.”
Ennis discovered he had met the minimum requirements to attend after meeting with a MSU transfer representative.
After graduating from MSU with a degree in agriculture and natural resources education, he taught vocational agriculture at Lakeview High School. A few years later, Ennis worked at the Michigan Vocational Education Personnel Development Project at MSU for five years, organizing about 125 workshops on topics such as small engine repair, cake decorating, business education, and statistical process control.
He was then employed at the Michigan Center for Career and Technical Education, where he developed and delivered a variety of curriculum development services for career and technical education. The experience provided him with a wide base of experience, which led him to the Ph.D. program in comprehensive vocational education programs at The Ohio State University.
After graduation, Ennis came back to Michigan and worked for the University of Michigan-Flint and Eastern Michigan University as an adjunct professor in education, teaching research methods and teacher education courses. He later worked with grants at Mott Community College before transferring to a position in the Curriculum Development Office.
Ennis then accepted a position at Ferris State University as an associate professor in career and technical education and eventually advanced to full professor, a position he’s held for the last 15 years working in both the School of Education and the Doctorate in Community College Leadership program.
Ennis said the list is long when discussing the benefits of a SC4 education.
“SC4 provided an opportunity to explore many different classes, including unsuccessfully taking an introduction to piano and a private plane pilot’s license class,” he said. “In many of the courses, I initially struggled because of the lack of experience in taking college track courses in high school. In hindsight, if the courses would have been taken at Michigan State University, it would have been a huge financial mistake.”
Ennis added when he attended SC4 in the fall, he typically parked across from the school library.
“In this parking lot was a chestnut tree that produced an abundance of chestnuts in the fall,” he said. “One sunny afternoon in 1980, I filled my pockets with chestnuts and took them home to plant in a small tree nursery. Six trees sprouted from these chestnuts, and right now one of the trees is nearly 15 feet tall and growing at my mother’s home. This tree reminds me of my experience at SC4.”
The benefits of an SC4 education according to Dr. Frederick Michael Ennis:
- An opportunity for students to afford college and be prepared to transfer or earn an associate degree.
- Exposure to a wide variety of teaching styles and personalities.
- Study skills that saved my academic life.
- A variety of courses that were not offered in high school.
- Instructors who made you think.
- Assistance that was available and did not embarrass students.
- Instructors who made a strong connection between the amount of time studying and the grade received.
- An integration of practice and theory.
- Acceptance of people at all levels and backgrounds.
- Course work that was transferable to major universities.
